I noticed that it for the first time in in 2015 when buying a military history book at brick and mortar store.

Some books both in local stores and ordered online have dark smudges on them.

Here are a few examples:

One was ordered from global seller, another from a local auction site. Both new unused books.

About 1/3 of books I bought since 2017 from the global seller arrive dirty.

What's going on? Has anyone else encountered the phenomena?

I have a theory that price wars between store chains and pressure for higher store discounts has led to collapse of quality of shipping and storage which resulted in books getting regularly damaged or stored in dirty conditions.

"There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush" -Scriptorus Munificantus

Couple to that the notion that many companies viewed anything less than a 7/10 as a bad review, even when their scales note a 5 as average.

It's into economics territory - we're extremely two-faced, hypocritical creatures on an intellectual level. Our statement about how much we'll pay for something massively misleads compared to what we'll actually pay for something when presented with it.

Almost as if you can't take us (as a species) at our word.

Those words included...

"When my housemate puts his bike in the middle of the living room floor, I find that inordinately jarring, annoying and rude, but for me to refer to it as "genocide" would be incorrect." -Athxisor.wordpressXisor's Dice-o-matic Maiminator

For starters, people who review things tend to either love it or hate it. Only people who are trying to log as many reviews as possible bother to give reviews on things they found average. Also, and I couldn't really tell if the YouGov was getting at this, but I do recall reading something about how people add or deduct scores to their reviews when reviewing things. In other words, if you thought it was better than average it will more likely than not get an 8 than a 6 even though above average would be a 6. And vice versa on negative scoring.

The thing i'm talking about isn't quite that subjective (although it is for reasons i'll briefly explain), because Amazon does have condition guidelines (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201475010). I'm finding that the criteria are frequently (less than 50% of the time, but often) ignored. I'm finding good is nearer acceptable and very good is nearer good.

Rob P wrote:I've not had this problem, but I have noticed that Amazon's 3rd party second hand book rating of very good is well below what you would expect very good to mean.

When buying from abroad I mainly experience this problem with Bookdepository since late 2017. Like, 1/3 to half of books arrive with dirty fingerprints on them.

Rob P wrote:For starters, people who review things tend to either love it or hate it. Only people who are trying to log as many reviews as possible bother to give reviews on things they found average. Also, and I couldn't really tell if the YouGov was getting at this, but I do recall reading something about how people add or deduct scores to their reviews when reviewing things. In other words, if you thought it was better than average it will more likely than not get an 8 than a 6 even though above average would be a 6. And vice versa on negative scoring.

I have found this kind of lack of objectivity very annoying. People treat everything they like as a masterpiece.

Rob P wrote:The thing i'm talking about isn't quite that subjective (although it is for reasons i'll briefly explain), because Amazon does have condition guidelines (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201475010). I'm finding that the criteria are frequently (less than 50% of the time, but often) ignored. I'm finding good is nearer acceptable and very good is nearer good.

Yeah. The book with the massive dirty fingerprints was "new", "no traces of use". I already encountered it with that seller on less massive scale. I kinda ignored it because these are literally last copies available in the country but I'm tempted to write to them about it because it got quite outrageous.

"There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush" -Scriptorus Munificantus

Rob P wrote:The thing i'm talking about isn't quite that subjective (although it is for reasons i'll briefly explain), because Amazon does have condition guidelines (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201475010). I'm finding that the criteria are frequently (less than 50% of the time, but often) ignored. I'm finding good is nearer acceptable and very good is nearer good.

Just received a "Very good" book bought on eBay. Has spine broken in 4 places. Scratches, few bent pages. A sticker. Also, different edition than on auction picture.

"There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush" -Scriptorus Munificantus